The family is the basic cell of government: it is where we are trained to believe that we are human beings or that we are chattel, it is where we are trained to see the sex and race divisions and become callous to injustice even if it is done to ourselves, to accept as biological a full system of authoritarian government.

GLORIA STEINEM, speech, July 1981

Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning.

GLORIA STEINEM, attributed, Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing

Self-esteem isn't everything; it's just that there's nothing without it.

GLORIA STEINEM, attributed, 1001 Pearls of Wisdom to Build Confidence: Advice and Guidance to Inspire

Someone once asked me why women don't gamble as much as men do, and I gave the commonsensical reply that we don't have as much money. That was a true but incomplete answer. In fact, women's total instinct for gambling is satisfied by marriage.

GLORIA STEINEM, attributed, Quote Unquote